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Watson at peace with decision

There are those blue chippers who make the most out of the college football recruiting process — taking untold trips to faraway campuses, playing cat-and-mouse games with their ultimate decision, and showing up at signing day events with multiple baseball caps, stringing folks along until the final second.

Clarke Central’s Quenshaun Watson isn’t one of those guys.

Less than two weeks after the Gladiators’ season ended at the hands of Northside-Warner Robins in the second round of the Class AAAA state playoffs, the 5-foot-10, 175-pound running back announced his verbal commitment to play college football at the University of Tennessee.

On Wednesday morning, in a celebration at the school, Watson will sign a letter of intent to go to the same school he pledged his loyalty to only two months before.

Watson — who earned Class AAAA All-State honors and was named the Banner-Herald’s Prep Football Player of the Year in 2011 — said it was easy to stick with his original commitment.

“Other schools pretty much respected my commitment,” he said. “I didn’t get any more calls after that, except from Tennessee coaches. Even though it was just a verbal commit, other schools didn’t come after me, so I guess they respected the fact that I’d made up my mind.”

It didn’t hurt that Watson’s coach, Leroy Ryals, was adamant that once Watson made his decision, there was no turning back.

“I don’t play that way,” said Ryals, who has coached at both the college and high school level and is intimately familiar with the recruiting process. “I tell them before they commit how I feel about it. I tell the player, ‘Now make sure this is where you want to go.’ To me, committing is like signing. And a man is only as good as his word. You give your word to a coach and a university, as far as I’m concerned, that’s where you’re going. You don’t have to (commit early).

“I’ve had some cases where kids tried to de-commit or do this or do that. Once they commit, I don’t even let them visit any more schools. A kid can do what he wants to and his parents can do what they want to, but if they try to de-commit, I just get out of the picture.”

Watson, who began earning attention from college coaches after his sophomore season (when the Gladiators advanced to the Class AAAA state title game in the Georgia Dome) said that Ryals was a valuable resource when it came to selecting a college.

“Coach Ryals broke it down to me, as far as what I had to do to get into schools,” said Watson, who in 2011 rushed for 1,790 yards and a school-record 26 touchdowns as Clarke Central went 10-2. “He was more like a coach/father figure in a way, because he came to my house and talked to my mom about how it would go and if I might get pressured to commit early. He explained it to me very well. He’s been there and he knows it all.”

Both Watson and Ryals pointed to Waton’s mother, Fashonna Maxwell, for keeping the senior on solid footing during what can often be an enormous ego-inflating exercise.

“She’s helped me stay humble,” Watson said of his mother. “She’s been with me the whole way through this and her main questions were the same as mine — would the school have a major I wanted? Would they honor my scholarship if I got hurt?”

“I give a lot of credit to Q’s mother,” Ryals added. “She didn’t let him get the big head and she’s kept him grounded. When people find out there’s a young man whose stock is rising, they’ve got their hand out, so you have to be careful.”

When choosing Tennessee, Watson assented it didn’t hurt that a former teammate — offensive lineman Alan Posey — was already in Knoxville.

“We’re real cool,” Watson said of his friendship with Posey, who redshirted as a freshman. “When Alan was here, I looked up to him because he was a year ahead of me. Once I visited Tennessee, and I saw how much more mature he was while he was up there. He was an offensive lineman and he took care of me here, so I knew I could trust him on and off the field. He was a big brother there for me.”

Knowing that he’d have Athens native and former Gladiator tight end Derek Dooley as his head coach in college was also a plus.

“I really didn’t know about that until (Dooley) came to our football banquet last year,” said Watson who amassed 55 touchdowns and 4,072 yards during his prep career. “I’d heard that he played tight end on the 1985 state championship team. It’s a blessing to have someone who came from the same area you did, and it’s a blessing to have a coach like that.”

Ryals said last week that two other Clarke Central seniors — offensive lineman Justin Sarabia and running back Marquez Williams — both had school visits this weekend and plan to make their decisions official on Wednesday morning.